U. G. Krishnamurti

“ There is nothing to be achieved, nothing to accomplish. Because you have created the goal—say, selflessness—you remain stuck in selfishness. If the goal of selflessness is not there, are you selfish? You have invented selflessness as an object to pursue, meanwhile continuing to be selfish. How can you ever end your selfishness as long as you pursue selflessness? A certain amount of practical selfishness is necessary for survival, of course, but with you it has become a tremendous, unsolvable problem. ”

“ Effort is all you know. The "you", and everything it has achieved, has been a result of effort. Effortlessness through effort is like peace through war. How can you have peace through war? The "peace of mind" you want is an extension of this war of effort and struggle. So is meditation warfare. You sit for meditation while there is a battle raging within you. ”

“ In any event you do not act, you just think, which is to postpone. There is simply nothing else thought can do. That instrument called thought, which you are employing to achieve your so-called spiritual goals, is the result of the past. Thought is born in time, it functions in time, and any results it seeks are bound to be in and of time also. And time is postponement, the tomorrow. Take, for example, the fact of selfishness. It is condemned, while selflessness, a pure creation of thinking, is to be sought after. Its realization, however, lies always just ahead, tomorrow. ”

“ If this is so, then where is the room for practices, sadhana, and volition? It comes randomly, not because you deserve it. If you are lucky enough to have this dawn on you, you will die. It is the continuity of thought that dies. The body has no death, it only changes form. The ending of thought is the beginning of physical death. What you experience is the emptiness of the void. But there is no death for the body at all. I am sure this is of little consolation to you, though. Just wanting to be free of egoism is insufficient ”

“ You want more knowledge so you can develop better techniques for reaching your goal. You know that there is no guarantee that more experience, more knowledge, more systems and more methods will help you reach your goal. Yet you persist; it is all you know how to do. Seeing today demands action. Seeing tomorrow involves only hope.
Q: What is it that we are trying to see with the help of techniques?
U.G.: You want to see meaning in your life. As long as you persist in searching for a purpose or meaning to life, so long whatever you are doing will seem purposeless and meaningless. ”

“ It is not matter converting into energy; it is atomic. The process goes on and on, while the pain comes and goes. It is like the tremendous relief when a tooth is extracted. That is the kind of relief that is there, not the spiritual. ”

“ That explosion hits life at a point that has never been touched before. It is absolutely unique. So whatever I may be saying cannot be true for you. The moment you see it for yourself you make what I am saying obsolete and false. All that came before is negated in that fire. You can't come into your own uniqueness unless the whole of human experience is thrown out of your system. It cannot be done through any volition or the help of anything. ”

“ The energy you are devoting to the search, to techniques, to your sadhana, or whatever you wish to call it, is taking away the energy you need to live. You are obsessed with finding meaning in life, and that is consuming a lot of energy. If that energy is released from the search for meaning, it can be used to see the futility of all search. Then your life becomes meaningful and the energy may be used for some useful purpose. Life, the so-called material life, has a meaning of its own. ”

“ As soon as you introduce the question "how to live?", you have made of life a problem. "How" to live has made life meaningless. The moment you ask "how", you turn to someone for answers, becoming dependent. ”

“ It burns out this search, the hunger. The hunger stops, not because it is satisfied. The hunger can never be satiated, especially by the traditional food that is offered. With the burning away of that hunger, the duality ceases. ”

“ The ideas you have about that natural state are totally unrelated to what it actually is. You are trying to capture and give expression to what you hope is that state. It is an absurd exercise. What is there is only the movement to capture, nothing else. ”

“ The real thing is not something that can be experienced. Anything you can experience is old. That means everything you experience or understand is tradition. In other words, I am trying to free you not from the past, the conditioning, but, rather, from what I am saying. ”

“ It is not the courage you associate with struggle or overcoming. The valor I am talking about is the courage that is naturally there when all this authority and fear is thrown out of the system. Courage is not an instrument or quality you can use to get somewhere. ”

“ All spiritual, mystical experiences are born out of thought. They are thought-induced states, nothing more. The energy here that is burning all thought as it arises tends to accumulate. Eventually it has to escape. The physical limitations of the body act as obstacles to the escape of this unique energy. When it escapes it goes up, never down, and never returns. ”

“ I am not saying that you should therefore be selfish, only that thinking about its abstract opposite, which you have called "selflessness," is useless. You have also been told that through meditation you can bring selfishness to an end. ”

“ Whatever answers are given regarding death, you are not satisfied with them, and so you must invent theories about reincarnation. What is it that will reincarnate? Even while you are alive, what is there? ”

“ It is the result of sheer exhaustion, that's all. Your attempts to control or suppress your thoughts only tire you out, making you sort of battle-weary. That is the effortlessness and peace of mind you are experiencing. ”

“ You infer that a complete radical break with one's past is essential if one is to get beyond the prevalent mediocrity, if one is to live creatively. But there have been a great many intelligent, inventive people who have not undergone any death process or physiological "calamity", as you call it. ”

“ The stopping of doing is courage. The ending of tradition in you is courage.
Q: Even with courage there is no guarantee that one isn't wrong about life, or that one is not mistaken about the important things.
U.G.: When once you are freed from the pairs of opposites—right and wrong, good and bad—you will never be wrong. But until then the problem will be there.
Q: Reaching the end of opposites has rather frightening implications ...
U.G.: It is like accidentally touching a live wire. You are much too frightened to touch it through your own volition. ”

“ There is no love in the world. Everybody wants the same thing. Whosoever is the most ruthless gets it—as long as he can get away with it. Getting what you want in this world is a relatively easy thing, if you are ruthless enough. ”

“ The expression of what is here occurs because of you, not me. That medium—you—is corrupt. The medium is only interested in maintaining its own continuity. So anything that happens there is already dead. ”

“ All you can do with it is to try to organize it; create organizations, open schools, publish holy books, celebrate birthdays, sanctify holy temples, and the like, thus destroying any life it may have had in it. No individual can be helped by such things. They only help those who would live by the gullibility of others. ”

“ Your highly praised inventiveness springs from your thinking, which is essentially a protective mechanism. The mind has invented both religion and dynamite to protect what it regards as its best interests. ”

“ All these bad, brutal, terrible people, who should have been eliminated long ago, are thriving and successful. Don't think that you can get off this merry-go-round, or that by pretending to be spiritually superior you are avoiding any complicity. ”